Book Reviews

 

 

 

LA BATAILLE DE CASABLANCA (8-9­10 NOV. 1942). By Jacques Mordal, Paris: Plon, 1952. 311 pp., charts and illustra­tions. 690 fr.

Reviewed by Rear Admiral Samuel E.

Morison, U. S. Navy (Retired)

(Admiral Morison is the author of the multi-volume History of United States Naval Operation in World War II.)

The gifted French naval historian Jacques Mordal, author of La Bataille de Dunkerque and La Campagne de Norvege, and who in private life is Medecin en chef Herve Cras of the French Navy, has produced a detailed, well-documented, and highly readable ac­count of the naval battle of Casablanca, which should be in every U. S. naval library. From the official French records, which he has studied meticulously, M. Mordal has cleared up many incidents and facts that were still obscure in 1946 when I wrote Op­erations in North African Waters, and he has given the complete story both of the naval and the ground fighting in Morocco.

The book opens with an account of the diplomatic preparations for our landings. The Americans entering that business, equipped with “cloak and dagger” and not much else, succeeded in fouling up a policy that, in M. Mordal’s opinion, had an excel­lent chance of success. Through excess of Secrecy they failed to give our French friends in North Africa sufficient information to en­able them to help, and they almost succeeded in getting our best friend of all, General Bethouart, sent before a firing squad. But it must be remembered that in an operation like “Torch,” where prompt intervention by Vichy, Hitler, Mussolini, or Franco would have spoiled every chance of victory, se­crecy was of the essence. As it is, one of our French friends in Algiers became too talka­tive on the evening of November 7-8, his conversation was radioed to Vichy, and Vichy’s plain-language warning to Admiral Michelier to be extremely alert against an Anglo-American landing in Morocco, re­ceived at 0250 November 8, was the first def­inite word that the French admiral at Casa­blanca knew of what was up.

M. Mordal gives a play-by-play account of the naval battle, in all its aspects. And he brings out the desperate situation that Ad­miral Gervais de Lafond was in, when or­dered to challenge capital ships and break up a well organized amphibious operation with the light forces at his disposal. His ships were so short of fuel oil and ammunition that they only performed a firing exercise once a month, and even then they were towed out of the harbor to save oil. One skipper was reprimanded by the Admiral for not sweating his anchor by manpower, because use of the windlass wasted precious fuel! Light cruiser Primauguel was undergoing repairs on the

morning of the 8th, and it was a miracle that she got out at all, though it would have been well had she stayed in port. M. Mordal’s ac­count of the French sailors’ experiences is most poignant—ignorant, for the most part, of whom they were fighting, losing 80 per cent of topside personnel by air attack before they came within gunfire range, survivors’ boats torn apart by a salvo from Massachu­setts. The whole battle, in fact, is poignant because so unnecessary. The French Army, Navy and Air Force lost about 900 killed or missing in action, together with Jean Bart badly damaged, Primauguet, six destroyers, eight submarines, and several merchant ves­sels, sunk. And the American losses were not negligible.

So, one inquires, why could it not have been prevented? For three days, Americans and French fought each other like hell, then became friends again, as they always had been, and, let’s hope, always will be. M. Mor- dal believes that the Americans were too precipitate, too eager to fight; that nothing could stop them. He quotes me to that effect (p. 41), but I was quoting the exec, of one destroyer, who was hardly representative of the attitude in Admiral Hewitt’s task force. I can say that nobody on my ship, which was one of the “fightin’est” of the Atlantic Fleet, wanted an unnecessary fight. We all hoped the French would receive us as friends; but we had to be prepared for a different out­come. The French were given ample oppor­tunity, so we thought, to hoist the white flag, to direct searchlights vertically, or to radio that they would not oppose the landings. United States forces were strictly enjoined not to fire unless fired upon, and M. Mordal admits that they obeyed. In no instance was the “Play ball!” given before the French showed fight. Yet he states (p. 43), “Nothing prevented Admiral Hewitt from keeping at a respectful distance and undertaking nego­tiations.” Well, plenty did! Could any re­sponsible military commander order a fleet to mill around off the Moroccan coast for days, with U-boats thrusting in and follow­up convoys piling up, while Admiral Darlan and Marshal Petain made up their minds? An amphibious operation is a sort of chain re­action. Its momentum cannot be stopped ex­cept by overwhelming resistance. Once our landing craft were in the water off Fedhala, operation “Torch” had to go on to the bloody conclusion, if the French chose to resist.

Nobody on our side will now blame them for fighting back. We honor them for doing it. We are better friends now because they did. Admiral Hewitt’s sailors and General Pat­ton’s soldiers were not a bunch of blood­thirsty pirates and wild Indians. They were “loaded for bear” all right, but for a German, not a French bear.

SUBMARINE! By Commander Edward L.

Beach, USN. Henry Holt and Company-

1952. 301 pages. S3.50.

Reviewed by Captain R. H. Rice,

U. S. Navy

(During World War II Captain Rice commanded the submarines USS. Drum and U.S.S. Paddle and was later in command of Submarine Squadron Two.)

Since the close of World War II, a number of books have been written dealing with the exploits of our submarines, among them the definitive history, U. S. Submarine Opera­tions in World War II, published by the U. S. Naval Institute. Commander Beach’s Sub­marineI differs from all its predecessors on two counts: it is the work of a “man who was there”; and it is aimed at the layman. Most of the other books have been selections from patrol and intelligence reports compiled bv officers who, though submariners, were not actually at sea in the ships. Commander Beach, a veteran of twelve war patrols, might, like Aeneas, say of what he describes “Magna pars fui.” His book abounds in the small incidents of day-to-day life in a war­time submarine which could be given only by a man who has lived that life.

and written for the general reader rather than the professional sailor. Gifted with the ability to explain in simple terms the p^ur' pose and method of operating complex mech­anisms, Commander Beach is able to paint a picture both vivid and understandable how a submarine and her crew function dur­ing the recurring crises of submarine war­fare. Drawing not only on his own expert' ences in Trigger and Tirante, but also °ⁿ those of other outstanding submarines such as Seawolf, Wahoo, and Tang, he gives a dra­matic account of the excitement of the chase when a target is spotted; the exultation of success; the agony of disappointment when hours of careful maneuvering come to naught because of defective torpedoes; the grim tenseness of depth charge attacks; the emo­tional tension of weary weeks of fruitless patrol, constantly keyed up for something which never happens.

In all probability, most submariners have been unable to present to their families as clear a description of their wartime experi­ences as Commander Beach does for them in Submarine!

DANCE OF DEATH. By Erich Kern.

Translated from the German by Paul

Findlay. London, Collins Press. 1951. 255

pages. $2.50.

Reviewed by Lieutenant Com­mander Robert W. Murch,

U. S. Naval Reserve

(iCommander Murch is a member of the U. S. Naval Academy’s Department of Ordnance 6* Gunnery.)

Military men, historians, and armchair strategists will all find something of interest in Dance of Death, the personal narrative of an Austrian journalist turned soldier, SS Lieutenant Erich Kern, formerly of the SS Bodyguard “Adolph Hitler Division,” who witnessed the military and moral collapse of Hitler’s Germany as an infantryman fighting the Red Army on the Eastern front from 1941 to 1945.

To date but few worthy reports have been published of the bitter fighting in the Ukraine and Caucasus between the Russian and Ger­man armies, but Lieutenant Kern, in a nar­rative style similar to Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, has faithfully recorded the intensity, hardships, and bitter cam­paigning of an advance that came within hours of victory only to be hurled back in bloody retreat before a re-vitalized Red Army.

The book indicates the author to be a shrewd and astute observer of things military and political. Though not a member of the Nazi party, Kern’s experiences with the SS Adolph Hitler Division, The Viking Divi­sion, The Third Germanic Panzer Corps, the 14th Galician SS Division, and lastly as a prisoner of the United States Army, qualify him to make many pertinent observations on the political conduct of the war as seen through a soldier’s eyes. His appraisals of the Red Army and the Soviet Union make inter­esting and timely reading for those desirous of augmenting their information on Russian military methods.

Typical of many of the political and mili­tary facets to be found in the book is a short essay-like chapter dealing with, according to Kern, Hitler’s two gravest mistakes of his entire career. The first error was Hitler’s in­ability to realize that the people of the Ukraine and Caucasus were eager to be de­livered from the harsh rule of the Soviet Commissars. During the first days of the German advance, the Ukrainian populace treated the Germans as liberators and clamored for arms and supplies to form partisan units to continue the fight against Communism. But Hitler decreed instead a scorched earth policy and campaign of bru­tality that evoked a rebirth of Russian na­tionalism that re-wedded the Slavic masses to the Communist party—an opportunity that Stalin was quick to exploit. The second error, more military than political, was Hitler’s failure to back up his most brilliant tactical commander, General Guderian of the Panzer Armies, who advocated a light­ning thrust direct to Moscow regardless of the threat of Russian counter-attack along his line of advance. Successive events proved Guderian right and Hitler and his more con­servative General Staff wrong. German delay permitted the Russians to regroup and the campaign in the east became a stalemate of blood instead of a quick victory.

One of the most revealing sections of the book deals with the interrogations of Rus­sian prisoners and their descriptions of Red Army organization. The backbone of Red Army units, from platoon strength to brigades and corps, is not the commanding officer but the Politruk (political commissar) assisted by the Informatory (informers). It is the job of the Informatory to repeat all their comrade’s conversation to their respec­tive Politruks—-as a result every Red soldier is helpless in a web of fear, deceit, and disci­pline by death.

Dance of Death is not pleasant reading but it is timely.

AMERICAN DEMOCRACY AND MILI­TARY POWER. By Louis Smith. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Illi­nois. 1951. 370 pages including notes and index. $5.00.

Reviewed by Associate Professor Elmer J. Mahoney, United States Naval Academy

(Professor Mahoney holds a law degree from the Univer­sity of Maryland and heads the U. S. Naval Academy's course in government.)

Can we win military security without los­ing democratic rights? This provocative question raises one of the most pertinent problems of our times. The question seems to come freshly on the American scene, but the issue, as Louis Smith’s book reveals, is as old as the constitution.

The author by looking at the past and re­lating it to the present issue provides the material wherein an intelligent body politic can find the answer.

Dean Smith’s comprehensive study is a lengthy and well-considered analysis of the problem of civil-military relationships from the establishment of the Constitution down to the present. It is a scholarly investigation of the democratic theory, historical back­ground, constitutional law, and administra­tive practices of our system of control of the military organization. The author’s painstak­ing investigation and contemplation of this problem makes the book almost required reading in this era of continuing tension.

As the author develops the history of civil supremacy it becomes manifest that the at­tainment of civil predominance both in con­stitutional principle and in actual govern­mental operation is far from being a simple matter.

True, there has never been a conspiracy among the officer corps to circumvent the processes of constitutional government; in general, our history shows that the military authorities have been faithful to the creed of subordination to civil power. The real prob­lem is not one involving any criticism of mili­tary motives. Rather it is a recognition that, inherently, military procedure is in conflict with democratic procedure.

The suggestion that military participation in all of our vital policies is likely to endanger many of our sacred constitutional rights is not an attack upon the integrity of our mili­tary leaders. No thinking American can fail to appreciate the magnificent attainments of our armed forces in times past. To see a threat to our constitutional principles in an age of broadening military control is merely to be realistic about the nature of military power.

The job of the armed forces is to fight in defense of the national interests. To do their job effectively they must, at times, follow procedures that are at odds with the ac­cepted civil processes. Iodine is dangerous if not used according to the doctor’s prescrip­tion; so is military power unless it is con­tained within the proper constitutional structure.

The American constitutional system is es­sentially an evolutionary process. Constitu­tional problems are the essence of American political life. As the author points out, “the men of each generation must translate the constitutional system into a policy and pro­gram consistent with the requirements of their own day.” Among the problems which must be solved in the latter half of the twen­tieth century is the one that the author writes about so tellingly.

At no time does the author forsake objec­tivity to preach a sermon; nevertheless, his presentation will leave no doubt that the re­tention of civil control is a matter of the highest urgency.

CAPE HORN TO THE PACIFIC. By Ray­mond A. Rydell. Berkeley and Los Ange­les: University of California Press. 1952­213 pages. $4.00.

Reviewed by Lieutenant Commander C. A. Matthews, Supply Corps, United States Naval Reserve

(Commander Matthews is on leave from his teaching P°~ sition at the University of Florida and is on duty at tP^e Naval Academy.)

When Magellan crowned the search for ^a water passage from the Atlantic to the Pa­cific with success, little did he realize that he was opening a route which would be traveled by a yet unborn nation towards world power. From that day in 1520 when the passage was first discovered until the open­ing of the Panama Canal in 1914, the sea route around South America played an im­portant role in world politics, in the growth of world trade, in the conversion of “heath- erns,” and especially in the expansion and consolidation of the United States.

The author is primarily concerned with the last role of the Horn. Use of the passage by European nations for exploration and in their struggle for power is briefly summa­rized. Much more attention is focused on the economic motives for rounding the Horn.

With the incidental discovery of profits to be earned from the trans-Pacific fur trade and severance of ties with the mother country, the Yankee trader began to make his impact on world developments via the Horn. He is, in addition to furs, motivated by traffic in hides and tallow, exploitation of rich whaling grounds, the development of island com­merce, and the discovery of gold in Califor­nia.

Along with these more materialistic mo­tives the author appraises use of the passage to carry the gospel, New England style, to the Pacific. In addition, its use by the Navy to protect American interests and to impress the world with American might is surveyed. Rydell concludes that, regardless of motive, the Horn played an important part in the economic development and in the political solidification of the United States.

This book is remarkably short but packed with interesting facts and little known inci­dents. Each of these, however, is carefully woven into the main fabric of thought. So skillfully is this done, that much of the eco­nomic and political significance of events would be missed were it not called spe­cifically to the reader’s attention.

The student of each phase of Horn traffic may complain of inadequate treatment. Sim­ilarly, students of the westward expansion of the United States might wish for more com­prehensive analysis. But this book is written for the layman and not the scholar, so that these criticisms should not detract from its value. It is annoying, however, to have to search for footnotes in the back rather than at the bottom of the page.

The author has succeeded in telling in an interesting manner the story of one of the least known phases of American expansion. The reader will find himself sailing with the “forty-niners” towards riches in California, searching for whales and seals in the ex­panses of the Pacific, and racing with the “Clippers” as they carry the American mer­chant marine to world leadership. Regret will be felt as the “Clippers” give way to the “down-Easter” and as the Horn loses her traffic to the iron horse and to the Canal.

ICE IS WHERE YOU FIND IT. By Cap­tain Charles W. Thomas, USCG. Bobbs- Merr'll Co., Indianapolis, 1951; 378 pp., illus. & indexed. $4.50.

NORTH OF THE CIRCLE. By Frank Illingworth. Philosophical Library, New York, 1952; 254 pp., illus. $4.75.

Reviewed by Lieutenant Commander Robert Daly, U. S. Coast Guard Reserve

For five years within the last decade, Captain Thomas commanded cutters in the Arctic or Antarctic. His account of his ex­periences is virtually a primer of ice naviga­tion.

In 1943, when he took over the cutter Northland on the Greenland Patrol com­manded by the Coast Guard’s famous Rear- Admiral E. H. (“Iceberg Eddie”) Smith, Captain Thomas was the first to admit that twenty years’ prior duty hadn’t given him many answers to the problems encountered in high latitudes. The frankness and good humor with which he details the embarrass­ing steps of learning his new trade, make his autobiographical book absorbing rather than egotistical. He gives generous credit to su­periors and juniors alike, whoever con­tributed to his growing understanding of ice and wind and sea. The extent of his success is evidenced in Rear-Admiral R. E. Byrd’s foreword: “When we needed an ice skipper to navigate unprotected ships through the ice of the Ross Sea at the bottom of the world we decided that Captain Thomas was the man for the job.”

Captain Thomas was far distant from peace and a trip to the Antarctic in 1943. First, there was a war to be fought and won. It was a strange war waged by the Greenland Patrol, involving only a handful of ships and

a few thousand men. Except for the science of meteorology, the war probably never would have stretched out towards northern Greenland. However, as the invasion of Festung Europa neared reality, the Germans decided to establish weather stations on islands like Novaya Zemlya, Spitzbergen, and Jan Mayen. Of these, the latter was within the jurisdiction of the Greenland Pa­trol.

Admiral Smith forestalled the Nazi at­tempt on Jan Mayen by sending Captain Thomas to establish a weather station there in November, 1943. Thomas completed the assignment a few days before the island was frozen in for the winter. The following spring, he commissioned the powerful Eastwind on our Pacific coast, and thereby had public acknowledgement of his development, for the Eastwind was the first of the Coast Guard’s prized new icebreakers. In late summer, 1944, he was back in Greenland waters, cleaning out German weather stations. Joined by the sister ship Southwind in Oc­tober, Captain Thomas made naval history by breaking into heavy ice to capture the 1,000 ton German icebreaker Exlernestiene- This was the only capture made by our naval forces of a German surface naval vessel at sea during the war—if the solid ice gripp¹¹¹? the Externestiene qualifies the capture as having occurred at sea. Frozen solid in ^a consolidated field some ten miles off Shannon Island, 75°N, the skipper of Externeslic’^ie surrendered after three 5'38 salvoes from the Eastwind. “We thought we were being ^at' tacked by huge tanks traveling over the ice, he explained to Captain Thomas. “I had no idea any ship could ever break through- After this, it gave Captain Thomas tremen­dous satisfaction to break his prize clear an to send her rechristened the Eastbreeze tri­umphantly to Boston.

The wind class icebreakers had prove their worth during the war. It was natura > then, that one accompanied Byrd’s 1946" 1947 Antarctic expedition, but Captai¹¹ Thomas implies that it was luck rather than ability that put him in command of the Nortkwind. His account of the subsequent expedition is engrossing, although he implies that he had more to learn than anyone on his ship, which was apparently run by omnis­cient subordinates, especially Commander P. J. Smenton, who could imperturbably solve such unusual problems as the berthing and feeding of king penguins. His respect for his Navy colleagues is profound, because they did not have ships with If skins and heavy frames at one foot intervals. The modest tenor of his book may be seen in his tribute to the captains of the Merrick, Yancey, Mount Olympus and Sennet: “It is an easy job to slam an icebreaker around in the ice without too much fear of her being holed, particularly when her officers have had long experience in this type of work— but it is difficult with a thin-skinned vessel.” Even so, he was proud of Byrd’s “Well done.”

The book ends with the Norlhwind's tour of duty on the Bering Sea Patrol in 1948. It is a good, honest, highly informative book, which will well repay reading by any officer who has even a remote possibility of being called upon to serve in high latitudes.

In contrast to Ice Is Where You Find It, Mr. Illingworth’s North of the Circle is a dish of very weak tea. An enthusiastic tripper who has fallen under the “spell of the North,” Mr. Illingworth thinks that the cathedral magnificence and silence of the Arctic make the Arctic ideal for vacations. Except for a description of a visit to Spitz- bergen, there is nothing in North of the Circle that hasn’t appeared in the works listed in his bibliography.

Significantly enough, Captain Thomas didn’t have to make any acknowledgements to authorities.

MARINER’S GYRO-NAVIGATION

MANUAL. By Lieut. Walter J. O’Hara,

USMS. 164 pages, 57 illustrations. Cornell

Maritime Press, Cambridge, Md. 1951. S3.50.

Reviewed by Captain Walter N.

Larkin, U.S.M.S.

(Captain Larkin is a Marine Consultant with offices in New York City.)

After answering thousands of letters from

Kings Point (U. S. Merchant Marine Acad­emy) graduates seeking assistance in diag­nosing gyro problems, Lieut. W. J. “Salty” O’Hara has painstakingly included ten years of teaching technique into a truly excellent book on gyro equipment.

The sea-going personnel of all Navies and Merchant fleets in the world has long been in a great need for such a technical and prac­tical manual for use aboard ship. This is a book which will add to the efficiency of maintenance of gyro equipment. The first inspection of the manual shows that it is really worthy of belonging in the library of those mariners who are charged with the responsibility of operating and maintaining such equipment.

The manual plunges from a descriptive rather than a mathematic treatment of the fundamental characteristics of the Gyro­compass into the nomenclature, design, and mechanics of operation. Chapters are in­cluded to adequately acquaint the gyro officer with all the problems confronted in the efficient maintenance of the marine gyro equipment such as the Gyro-compass, Gyro Pilot, Course recorder, and Gyro-compass auxiliaries.

There are descriptions of the Gyro-Mag­netic compass, Gyro Ship Stabilizer, and Roll and Pitch Recorder. There are fifty- seven carefully selected illustrations and diagrams to supplement the understandable written text material. There are review questions at the end of each chapter to assist the reader in recording essential basic in­formation. There is an adequate bibliogra­phy for advance study, but probably the most valuable part of the manual is the Resume of Compass Troubles and Remedies, not to mention operation and maintenance detailed instructions.

From the Foreword, the Superintendent of the U. S. Merchant Marine Academy, Rear Admiral Gordon McLintock, USMS, has this to say: “This Mariner’s Gyro Naviga­tion Manual is an excellent text for the study, operation, and maintenance of gyro­scopic compass and equipment on board ship, and it is written in such a practical and interesting manner as to be easy for the stu­dent to follow.”